On our way from Coromandel to Kerikeri we made a stop in Auckland in order to put some advertisments for our car in some backpacker hostel, because we wanted to get rid of it by the time we fly out. After that we drove to Kerikeri in order to receive a very warm welcome of our host Veronica. Maybe the nicest welcome since we left Wellington.
After we had dinner including long conversation (and the first decent shower since Rotorua 😉 ) Veronica showed us what she wanted us to do the next day. She was in an exceptional situation as her son (or better to say her daughter in law) waited for her first child to arrive within the next days. The child was already delayed why the birth should be started the next Thursday at least. As we were here, we should sit the house in case the baby comes and feed the (blind) cat beside doing a bit renovation work as Veronicas other son (she has three) would marry soon. Sounded and also was very relaxed, just typical Kiwi.
After doing a few jobs in the garden, Veronica drove us to one of the peninsulas around Kerikeri after lunch. Almost everyone who lives there is somehow related to Veronica. Her family is just huge! We did a little walk to the top of the peninsula, where we got an amazing view over the Bay of Islands. Afterwards we visited Veronica’s grandmother, who is an unbelievable person. And yes, you read right, her grandmother, who is 99 years old. That meant that she was going to become great-great-grandmother when the baby arrived! Besides that, she has 26 great-grandchildren and who knows how many grandchildren. As said before, a huge family. We played a match Phase 10 and drove back to Veronica to plan our visit at Cape Reinga.
We booked a tour for the most northern point of the North Island, which started in Kaitaia. That was probably the first time that we were really impressed about a tour. Not only that it was only 50$ per person (which was quite cheap if you think that only fuel would have cost us at least 50$), it was also very good. We saw the largest man made Kauri forest, some beautiful beaches and bays and then finally the light tower. This point is 1452km beeline apart from Bluff, which means we now travelled the whole way between this two points!!! Afterwards we drove in our 4WD bus along the 90-Mile-Beach (which is actually only 67 miles long)! Back in Kaitaia it was almost sunset why we headed back along the coast and watched the sunset at one of the countless beaches along the way. Back in Kerikeri we saw that Veronica disappeared because the great-great-grandson was going to arrive.
So we the whole house for ourselves for the next 5 days and made ourselves at home. We planned a bit our route through the States, which wasn’t very far away and made some trips to Pahia (and the Pahia Falls), to the Hunderwasster-toilets and the Rainbow Falls in Kerikeri. Unfortunately the weather was again not very good, why we just relaxed most of the time (besides doing our jobs there)!
At Saturday we headed back on the way to Auckland to Whangarei. We took, however, the route along the West Coast of Northland and visited the Waipoua Forest. There are the two tallest Kauri trees in the world (see pictures). We took some more stops along the coast and at some freshwater lakes with sand beach, just to head back to the eastern coast to Whangarei in the evening. There we met our next couchsurfing host Jamie, but what happened there is another story…